


and I never want to leave

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: acts of intimacy [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Lazy Mornings, M/M, Napping, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 00:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: Otabek is heavy, the weight of his head like an anchor where it rests on Leo’s knee.





	and I never want to leave

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Megan. Prompt: one falling asleep with their head in the other's lap.

Otabek is heavy, the weight of his head like an anchor where it rests on Leo’s knee.

Leo’s been amused by this since the day they met, that someone who packed up his life to chase a dream halfway around the world could be so steady, so slow-moving in the everyday. Otabek is the sort who’s perfectly content to sit still when he doesn’t need to move, to speak only when necessary or prompted, every tiny motion deliberate, every word precise. You’d almost think only his body was fifteen; his mind pushing fifty, already a grown man.

It makes him laugh to think about it. _Boring_ is the word he’s heard rinkmates and common acquaintances use. Laughing, so he knows they don’t mean it unkindly: _Come on, Leo, he’s too boring for you._ And much as Leo hopes he’ll one day be a master of the witty clapback, his answer is never a zinger, never particularly caustic, or cryptic, or surprisingly profound. Only this: _Otabek’s great,_ and a smile that says he means it from the bottom of his heart, regardless of how little anyone understands.

He doesn’t need to tell them, or anyone, how much he loves the pleasing irony that a boy from a country whose name means _the land of the wanderers_ might teach him that happiness is no more than this—being able to be where you are and finding, somehow, that you don’t want to be anywhere else. Otabek is fifteen, but he’s wise, and steady, and when the world moves too fast Leo loves knowing that some of this quiet that helps Otabek stay the course is now his to keep.

It’s why he won’t trade Sunday mornings for anything, not money or medals or record-breaking high scores. Sunday mornings are for sitting on the floor of his room and blithely ignoring the bed and the beanbags and the couch in the living room one door away, because no sitting-surface is more relaxing than the floor, when you get right down to it, _pun absolutely intended—_ or, well, Leo sitting and Otabek stretched out across the carpet like a gigantic, frowny-faced cat, sometimes talking, mostly just listening to the music wafting upward at low volume from Leo’s phone. They take turns choosing: nineties pop, quiet instrumental jazz, obscure postrock tracks that twinkle and undulate and sound just like floating in space must feel.

Leo watches, one eye on his Instagram feed, the other on Otabek’s face. By the fifth or sixth song, Otabek’s eyelids droop, close, open again, the gaps growing longer with every repetition. By the eighth or ninth, they stay shut, and his breathing has petered out into the gentle rise and fall Leo always waits for, the pattern that tells him Otabek can’t be any more at ease than this.

The world moves fast—as do they, learning to fly—but Sunday mornings are for counting all the slow things he loves best in the world. Waves breaking on a beach at low tide. Sunrises. Slow dance scenes in movies. Instant replay—how it shows you the way a body curves precisely coming down from a jump, a scything leg, the precise angle at which a pair of arms opens. The way Otabek breathes.

Leo leans back against his bed, one hand holding his phone and the other nestled in Otabek’s hair, and smiles as he searches for the next song.


End file.
